Experience

Jim Walker, PE

Jim has over 45 years of experience in the energy industry, navigating through energy supply and demand turbulence, price shocks (up and down), and technology and policy changes. Jim is a registered professional engineer, an entrepreneur, and a strategy advisor/writer. Jim is a graduate of MIT and UMass/Amherst.

Experience

  • Solar PV Project Development

    Jim led Ameresco’s Northeast solar PV project development team in designing, permitting, financing, constructing, owning, and operating solar PV projects.

    Projects were built on school roofs, parking lots and garages, highways, corporate data centers, airport terminals, universities, and large land sites for utility-scale solar PV projects.

  • Starting & Growing Businesses

    Before founding Cleantech Adoption, Jim started and grew Ameresco's profitable East Region solar PV business. Jim also founded and built XENERGY's Energy Supply Management business to help industrial plants stay in business with deregulated, lower-cost natural gas.

  • Helping Entrepreneurs Launch Businesses

    Jim volunteered to help clean technology start-ups at the MIT Enterprise Forum and MassVentures. At MIT, Jim created and co-founded the successful Ignite Clean Energy Business Plan Competition, which was the forerunner to the Cleantech Open.

  • Conducting Investment Analyses

    For Ameresco, Jim prepared financial Pro Forma analyses for solar PV project development and construction approvals by the firm's CEO. These analyses led to profitable operating projects.

  • Analyzing Business Strategies

    Jim analyzed the energy industry's business-to-business (B2B) trends for Forrester Research's Fortune 500 clients.

    He also wrote executive reports on natural gas supply/demand market trends for Global Insight.

    For Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), Jim prepared a 20-year scenario analysis of plausible futures for retail electric utilities.

  • Advocating Regulatory Changes

    When Jim was the energy manager for GTE Corporation, he successfully testified before state public utility commissions in Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania to open utilities to supply competition.

    Jim also advocated at Ameresco to support the solar PV industry in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island.

  • Framing Customer Solutions

    For Sun Microsystems, Jim met with electric utility CFOs and CIOs to share his energy and technology market insights on cyber-security, customer metering, billing, and customer services using Sun's solution suite. The goal was to help the sales staff change the customer conversation from commodity product selling to solution selling.

  • Awards, Licenses, and Patents

    Heat pump patent from Carrier Corporation

    MIT 2006 Presidential Citation Award

    MIT Enterprise Forum’s All-Star Volunteer Award. 

    Licensed professional mechanical engineer (PE) 

  • Education

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) Sloan School, Master in Business Administration

    The University of Massachusetts, Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering